1. The Prestige
2. Memento
3. Following
4. Batman Begins
5. The Dark Knight
6. Inception
7. Insomnia
i have all of his movies on dvd, except inception, obviously. i think they’re all brilliant, except for insomnia, which is just ok. i look forward to seeing inception, and anything else he does, ever.
1. Following
2. Inception
3. The Dark Knight
4. Memento
5. The Prestige
6. Batman Begins
7. Haven’t Seen Insomnia
1. The Prestige
2. Following
3. The Dark Knight
4. Memento
5. Batman Begins
6. Insomnia
haven’t seen inception
1. The Prestige
2. The Dark Knight
3. Batman Begins
4. Memento
5. Insomnia
6. Inception
haven’t seen following
1. Memento
2. Following
3. The Dark Knight
4. The Prestige
5. Batman Begins
6. Inception
7. Insomnia
01. Inception
02. The Dark Knight
03. Following
04. Memento
05. The Prestige
06. Batman Begins
07. Insomnia
1) Memento
2) The Dark Knight
3) Inception
4) Batman Begins
5) The Prestige
6) Following
7) Insomnia
I’ve seen three of his films, and part of Batman Begins
Momento is my least favorite. It is based completely off of a gimmick, and I just didn’t care for it at all.
The Dark Knight was good, but I feel that it lacked pacing and tension.
Inception was better, but lacked all levity and tension, and could have used some editing.
I own The Prestige, but have not gotten around to watching it.
From what I have seen, Inception is his best film, but I can’t put it ahead of any of the Bourne movies or Body of Lies. He hasn’t made a film that I would place in the top 300, maybe not even in the top 500.
1. The Dark Knight
2. Inception
3. The Prestige
4. Batman Begins
5. Memento
6. Insomnia
Can’t rank “Following” as I haven’t seen it in a long time and find it unfair to rank something that I can’t remember all that well.
I agree with what Jason says about Memento (though everything else he said is absolutely absurd)… it is wholly based on a gimmick and loses a lot of its genius in repeated viewings. Saying that, I still really like it (I really like all of his films except for “Insomnia”… which I think is merely okay… nothing more) and think the pacing and storytelling is extremely well executed all around… plus the performances are great (except for Moss).
1. Inception
2. Memento
3.The Dark Knight
4. Following
5. The Prestige
6. Insomnia
7. Batman Begins
The Prestige would have been number 2 if it wasn’t for Hugh Jackman’s terrible performance.
@Timothy: I’m with you on Jason’s opinions being absurd for the most part – he has only seen three of Nolan’s movies, yet is convinced he hasn’t made a movie that belongs in the top 500. Just a little idea, Jason: watch them all before you go and make a statement like that.
@Superkal: I agree about Jackman; in fact, I’ve never seen him play anything but one-dimensional, flat characters.
It is based completely off of a gimmick,
Batman is no gimmick?
I wouldn’t call a character a gimmick – maybe some of his attributes can be regarded as such, but that’s all. Batman might be a cliché, perhaps (most likely), but I think Nolan managed to transcend this in his two Batman movies.
I don’t agree that Memento is based on a gimmick; the reverse storytelling really serves a purpose to what’s going on, instead of the other way around.
@ Rick Brands I don’t agree that Memento is based on a gimmick
Yeah, I was just trying to get Jason to think….
1. mENTO
2. The Dark Knight
3. Batman begins
4. Inception
5. the Prestige
6. Insomia
7. following
@Robert: Well, I don’t have any problem with opinions differing from my own, but Jason’s stand on things seems to be pretty much unfounded.
As for his finding Body of Lies better than Inception: to me, it seems the only thing that links those movies is that DiCaprio stars in both of them. But then again: I’m yet to see Inception in its totality, and I thought Body of Lies was a pretty boring movie – I ranked it three stars, definitely not one of Ridley Scott’s better efforts. But what I can say for certain, is that Inception has a far more interesting premise than Body of Lies, which is by all accounts a very straight-forward story.
As for his statement that TDK lacks tension: I think I’m not the only one to consider it one of the most thrilling movies I’ve ever seen, mainly due to the villain’s unpredictability. After multiple viewings, I do have to agree that the pacing is a little off from time to time, but it doesn’t hurt the movie at all – if anything, it gives the viewer time to breathe and think over the movie’s dramatic occurrences.
I can tell you what’s not at number one for me: INCEPTION. That one sucked such a fat one. I did not buy the dream world premise at all. It was such a ripoff of great virtual reality techno thrillers like The Matrix. And it just didn’t have the relevance of The Matrix. Poo poo.
I haven’t seen Following
1. Memento
2. Inception
3. The Dark Knight
4. The Prestige
5. Batman Begins
6. Insomnia
1. Memento
2. Inception
3. The Prestige
4. The Dark Knight
5. Batman Begins
6. Insomnia
Perhaps “gimmick” is too derogatory a term, but one of the difficulties I have with Nolan is that his seems to me a committed formalist, particularly in terms of narrative structure, and his films often strike me as more committed to structuring a story a certain way than they are to actually telling it. Thus, the backwards chronology in Memento, the matryoshka doll all-we-see-or-seem dream-nesting-in-another-dream structure of Inception, and the extensive cross-cutting in The Dark Knight and Inception, for example. Beneath the baroquely elaborate and self-serious narrative structures, Nolan’s films often feel rather mannered, hollow and stylistically conventional to me.
He definitely is a strict stylist, much in the same way Hitchcock or Kubrick were. As much as I am a fan of gritty, raw, realistic filmmaking, I’m also quite partial to this kind of excessively ‘clean’ directing and styling. However, I don’t think that makes any of Nolan’s films ‘hollow’, as you say; yes, he’s a stylist, but he also pays quite a lot of attention to character and story development – so I disagree with what I suppose is your criticism: that Nolan is ‘style over substance’. I think they’re treated as being equally important.
I have yet to see Inception or Following, but as for his other films:
1. The Dark Knight
2. Insomnia
3. Memento
4. The Prestige
5. Batman Begins
From what I have seen…
1. Inception
2. The Dark Knight
3. The Prestige
4. Batman Begins
Going to see Inception this weekend, but I can’t imagine it being any higher than #3…
1. Memento
2. The Prestige
3. Following
4. Batman Begins
5. Insomnia
6. The Dark Knight
…which isn’t to say The Dark Knight is bad, I just do not understand all the crazy love for it. Ledger is pretty great, but I found it too long and too heavy for its own good. There was a slight sense of fun in Batman Begins that was completely gone in The Dark Knight, and it really could have used it. I really like Insomnia, but it’s merely well-done, which in Nolan’s filmography puts it close to the bottom, unfortunately. I’ll admit to not having seen Batman Begins since it came out, but I remember being completely surprised by how good it was. Same with Following, which for me compares extremely favorably to Darren Aronofsky’s Pi. Memento, as far as I’m concerned, is simply masterful; every time I watch I find some little detail that I missed before that adds a new dimension to the film. And I flat-out love The Prestige, which for my money has the best opening and closing shots of any American film of the 2000s, but I admit it somehow isn’t as good as it could have been.
best to worst…
Dark Knight
Memento
Inception
Following
The Prestige
Batman Begins
haven’t seen insomnia yet.
1.) Dark Knight
2.) Inception
3.) The Prestige
4.) Memento
5.) Batman Begins
6.) Insomnia
7.) Following
I really do enjoy all of his films so far. Even though the original Insomnia is near perfect (in my opinion) I still enjoyed Nolan’s remake, I thought it captured the same mood/feeling but he was able to put his own spin on a few things. Following is good but I didn’t think it was great at all. I feel that the budget limits the movie way too much, his ideas were much more grand that he was allowed to film. It just kind of floats instead of building up scene after scene.
It’s great to see so many different rankings and opinions about Nolan’s work – up ‘till now, no two people on this topic had the same order of favorites, which is quite interesting. It’s also nice to read some of the reasonings behind your rankings, as it made me rethink some of his movies. I even might consider rewatching The Prestige later on this week, because I’ve only seen it twice a long time ago, and both times, it didn’t really work for me. Still, to hear so much praise from quite a few of you, might make me give it another shot – I’ll keep you posted on that one.
1. Inception
2. Memento
3. Following
4. The Dark Night
5. The Prestige
6. Batman Begins
7. Insomnia
Rick Brands
Here’s my ranking:
6. The Prestige
As much as I am a fan of Christopher Priest’s sci-fi novels, I never was a big supporter of his side-step into the Victorian Age. It just seemed to me like the story turned out a bit of a mish-mash of pretty much unrelated matters, without any logical coherence. When Nolan was first mentioned as the one to make a film out of this source material, I was mildly curious – to me, it would’ve made more sense if it was one of Priest’s other, more sci-fi oriented works. Still, I loved the idea of Bowie as Tesla, and the leads were also okay – but my main beef remains with the story, which simply didn’t appeal to me all that much.
5. Insomnia
A remake of a great Norwegian movie, and as far as American remakes go, this one will be hard to top. However, Insomnia also marks the point at which Pacino became a carbon copy of his former greatness – as good as his performance is in this flick, it’s still pretty much a rehash and re-imagining of his previous roles, like in Heat and Carlito’s Way. This sentiment is only strengthened by the fact that he hasn’t done anything worthwhile ever since. The same goes for Robin Williams, who was a far more threatening and believable villain in One Hour Photo.
4. Batman Begins
Rebooting the Batman franchise after those two near-or-complete disasters, Nolan sure had quite the task ahead of him. Putting together a golden cast – which he would reuse many times afterwards – and a great coming-of-heroism script with David S. Goyer, he managed to prove a lot of sceptics wrong. As Batman remains my favorite ambiguous role model from my comic-book filled youth, he couldn’t have done me a bigger favor. Also, the inspired choice of lesser-known villains – Ra’s Al Ghul, Scarecrow – gave Batman Begins that extra edge that it needed.
3. Following
It seems that most people rank this film pretty low compared to Nolan’s other films, but if you take into account his completely original screenplay, the non-professional casting and the modest self-provided budget, I think you should really give this neo-noir flick another go; I, for one, have seen it at least four times over the past years, and it never ceases to amaze me. Just because it’s an early movie without any stars, nor attached to any well-known franchise, doesn’t make it inferior – quite the contrary.
2. Memento
I rewatched this one just a week ago, and was surprised at the subtle scripting that went into this venture. Also, the way that Nolan managed to get the best out of his principle players – I knew Guy Pearce was a great actor from LA Confidential, but he really outdid himself here, and I always regarded Joe Pantoliano as some sort of second-rate Steve Buscemi (boy, was I wrong!) – showed, again, a lot of promise for the future. Many have tried to copy this kind of reverse storytelling, but none came even remotely close.
1. The Dark Knight
As for now, it’s still my number one – since Inception premieres tomorrow around these parts. Why? Well, the mere balls Nolan showed by putting together a disassembly of one of the most loved superheroes (and villains), and giving himself quite a task to follow up the story with that dreaded third act – even without the unexpected demise of Ledger (who was indeed marvellous as The Joker) it would’ve been near impossible. Furthermore: beautiful city sceneries, nice little quirky details and some heartbreaking dramatic twists – what more do you need?